Rambling, rumbling, rumination

Posts Tagged ‘games’

Having been unemployed now for the better part of a year, scrambling for odd jobs and attempting a career change, I’m more sensitive than ever to the cost of things. There are a great many rants that I could indulge in, but at the moment, I’m in a contemplative mood.

Y’see, payment models are part of these MMO games that I write about here and there. Syl has a new post up that’s tapping into a bit of the blogging hivemind, which is buzzing about money again. I’m of a mind that the subscription model is a very poor value for me, F2P is a bit better when it’s not annoyingly restrictive or weirdly monetized, and “buy and play” of Guild Wars and Wizard 101 is still my favorite model.

Thing is, what little gaming I do these days is either on my smartphone with something like Slingshot Braves (which I’m still not spending money on, though I’d like to, in a way) or Flight Rising on my PC. In the former, I’d probably pony up a few dollars if I could buy specific gear I want, and in the latter, I don’t mind advertisements as the monetization vector.

It makes me wonder… has an MMO toyed with advertisements in their major cities? As noted in Darths and Droids, of all places, games actually can benefit from some verisimilitude by having sloganeering or even advertisement in big cities. The setting has to make sense, of course, and advertising isn’t always really a big money maker, but it seems like something someone might have tried, or could have tried. The Secret World, or The Matrix Online, maybe.

Anyway, I certainly don’t begrudge devs their money. I have my own money problems, and won’t pay for something that doesn’t offer me good value, but, as with Humble Bundles, I’m OK with spending money on games. I’m not a whale, I’m a stingy consumer. Offer me something worth paying for, and I probably will. Try to manipulate me with stupid things like lockboxes, slot machines, subscriptions or other obvious ploys to get money with little effort, and I’ll just move on.

Is this something you’d like to see on Kickstarter as a project done via Bicycle, to get some top notch cards at a decent price, since we’d be leveraging the “economy of scale” with a group order, or just offer them via TheGameCrafter.com, where it’s purely “print on demand”, no minimum order, but for cards of a slightly lesser caliber (TGC still does good work, it’s just not Bicycle Cards) at a slightly higher price.

I didn’t start this with Kickstarter in mind, but I’ve been poking around in the meantime, and it might be a viable option. Any thoughts? I’ll make them available for sale either way, and maybe both ways in the end, but if I’m going to do a Kickstarter, I’d lead with it. It would just be a way to try to get a better deal and a bit more exposure.

In the meantime, here’s a sneak peek at the King of Diamonds (Jules Verne) and the Jack of Spades (Henri Giffard). Thanks for stopping by!